A change had taken place in Ms. Opitz. Her brittleness gave way to warm-hearted care, without slackening her usual sense of duty.
The experienced pedagogue had long since recognized that, in contrast to her former high school students, her current pupils were eager to learn and therefore extraordinarily disciplined. The seemingly unapproachable brittle young lady had grown fond of us.
The last days of summer passed. The overcrowded schedule left no time for dreaming, but nevertheless the evening dance class began in the municipal ballroom. The girls were thrilled. They raved and put their heads together during the big break. They probably exchanged their amorous experiences from the previous dance evening.
I was unsettled because Rosi was also whispering along and kept away from me. On a colorful autumn day, I wanted to accompany her home after class, as I so often did. Rosi hid behind excuses and refused. That’s when I realized that I had lost my first great love. Heartbreak hurts, but you don’t die from it.
Everyday life demanded a lot of me. As always, late autumn was the worst season. The autumn weather made the dirt road to town impassable. With the bicycle I could only use the country road. The way to school became twice as long. The last few miles were as good as ever against the cold, rainy autumn wind. Furiously I stood in the pedals and the exhaustion drove the tears in my eyes, which fortunately nobody noticed in my rain-soaked face.
Going home, I had an easier time of it. The tailwind pushed me along. Finally it became winter. In frost and snow, I trudged to school in my usual fashion with my indispensable boots and stayed clean and dry to boot. The snow had long since seeped into the fields as meltwater, and a balmy wind was drying paths and the topsoil.
At last, I could use the bicycle again. Spring sowing had begun. Everywhere was harrowed, sown, and rolled. But the rural idyll was deceptive. There was a rumbling in the village. A reliable source had told them that the GDR government was planning a comprehensive restructuring of agriculture. Following the Soviet model, all farmers were to be brought together in production cooperatives.
It was hoped that the pooling of fields would lead to more effective use of agricultural machinery and higher productivity. The small farmers lamented. A few years ago, the land reform had turned expellees and day laborers into farmers, and now they were supposed to give up the land they had been granted! The large farmers who had been spared from the land reform were united.
They would never voluntarily cooperate with these small cow farmers under a cooperative umbrella. If the still secret government plans were to become reality by law, then hard and tough disputes with the peasantry were inevitable.
My father was home on a short vacation and had brought back some good news, at least for our mother: the factory had the three houses in the settlement that had been destroyed by the bombs rebuilt. The gaps in the block of houses had already been closed, but the interior work would still take a few months. Father was sure that he would be the last tenant to be awarded the rebuilt apartment.
As a precaution, the large candy box with the yellowed roses, which I had unconsciously taken with me to the air-raid shelter, was searched for the old rental contract. It was found under father’s invalid draft card, on the cover of which the bankrupt vulture with its wings spread wide and the swastika in its claws could still be seen.
In case of doubt, father could have proved that we were the rightful tenants until the apartment was destroyed. But even without this proof, father was awarded the apartment. Mother was overjoyed. She had waited six long years for this moment. 𝓣𝓸 𝓑𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓮𝓭…
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